Hmmm so I am the Hungry Reader. The one who reads. The one who is constantly reading or wanting to read constantly. This blog is all about the books I have read, the ones that I am reading and gems that I plan to read in the future or whenever it arrives.

Very few times you come across a book that makes you feel and takes you beyond that, almost in another realm of consciousness. “Academy Street” by Mary Costello was one such book that did it for me this year (and the year has not even begun properly, so to say). If you are the sort of reader that only reads a book a month, then I will almost force you to read, “Academy Street”. It is a book which every reader (no matter what level of reader) should read at least once in his or her lifetime and I am not kidding about this.

“Academy Street” came to me at a time when I needed it the most. Yes, I do believe that books find you when they have to. Till then, no matter how hard you try, you cannot immerse yourself in the book. The book’s permission is needed. “Academy Street” is a novella of one woman and her journey from being a girl to an old woman and life as she sees it through those decades and years gone by. This is perhaps me simply putting it. The book is so much more and the layers to it are just phenomenal.

I had not heard of Costello before picking up this one but I am only too glad that I have now. Tess is not just a character. She is perhaps somewhere there in all of us in various forms or maybe just one. The book charts Tess’s story so to say from childhood till she is an old woman – all her happiness, her anxieties, her loves, her transitions, the loss of her mother (which is stated at the very beginning of the book) to her migration from Ireland to America, a new land with new possibilities, new hopes and new losses. How can one remain untouched by this novella? This was my only thought when I finished this gem of a book.

I am quite sure that other writers might have explored this theme in other books, but what makes this one different is of course the writing. Costello does not confuse the reader. The facts are laid out. The story-line is simple. The writing is simpler. The characters are not so many. So what makes me say that this book is astounding? It is all in the words and the sentences used by the writer.

At the core of the book, there is empathy, loneliness and sheer need to be accepted which intensified chapter after chapter. You get to know Tess like a close friend and there were times I just wanted to keep the book down, so there would be more reading time with it. The book is about her siblings, her friends, but above it all, it was to me, just a brief and simple testimony to life and the living. Tess is constantly finding herself. She is constantly seeking, trying to become that someone, and that will ring true for anyone who picks up this book. There is grace, devastation, eye for detail, elegance and above all empathy to Costello’s writing. I suggest you go and start reading this right now. Savour and cherish it, as books such as these are meant to.

Here are some of my favourite lines from the book. There are obviously more, but for now these will do.

In her life, ever, there were only a few people who had been a fit, with whom she had felt understood.

Ease her terrible ache for human touch, human love. The room was flooded with light and she was blinded, mesmerised.

And how all things change or end or disappear, and this would too, this day, this moment. She looked around. And you too, you will all disappear.

Oh honey, when it comes to the heart, it ain’t about men or women, but people.

“If you wrote a letter to your sixteen-year-old self, what would it say?”

That is the premise of the book, “Dear Me” – Edited by Joseph Galliano. What would you tell your sixteen year old self anyway? What would you stop him or her from doing, which you know will be futile anyway, because he or she will not listen to the older you? The book is of famous people – of celebrities writing to their younger self, dispensing advice, providing nuggets of wisdom and trying to go back in time and perhaps contemplate on how life was.

The book is a revelation of sorts and at other times, I was tempted enough to pick up the notepad and write a letter to my sixteen-year-old self. There were letters that stood out – the ones by Elton John, Emma Thompson, James Woods, Jodi Picoult, and so many more. There are 75 letters in all, written by celebrities from various fields – from actors to comedians to novelists, they all are written depicting youth and what is called growing-up.

These letters touch on issues that are still prevalent – from gay rights to racism to being felt left out – the letters provide a sense of warmth and at the same time you empathize with at least a few of them, because you have gone through the same.

“Dear Me” is a bitter-sweet journey through life, sometimes scarily a reflection of your own. It is a book of letters, of contemplation, of thoughts and ideas. Joseph Galliano has done a wonderful job of editing this book and somehow compels you to write a letter to your sixteen-year-old self, sharing your fears and maybe consoling him or her – to let them know that it will all be alright, after all.

Once in a while, you chance upon a book, that you just have lying on your shelf and intend reading someday. However, that someday takes a while and when you do read it; you begin to realize that you wasted a lot of time, waiting for that someday. “Delicacy” by David Foenkinos had that impact on me. I kept wondering, why had I missed out on this when I first bought it? Why did I wait for two years to read this book? And all it took me was a six hour bus ride to finish it and come out of the reverie with a big fat grin on my face.

“Delicacy” by David Foenkinos is a charming little book. It is full of joy, happiness; comic moments and at the same time, there is sadness as well. Natalie is a woman who has it all. A great lover, who in turn becomes her husband. A successful job. A life which is fulfilled – more or less and there is nothing she could need or want. Till her life falls apart in one minute, or rather on a fateful Sunday, when the love of her life gets run over by a car and nothing makes sense anymore. And then just like that, life changes again and Natalie sees herself falling for the most unusual man ever. The setting I must mention is the city of romance, the capital of love, Paris. Paris is almost another character in the book – all pervasive and right there, sometimes mocking and sometimes encouraging love, the way it should be.

What I loved about the book was the way it is written but of course. The chapters are short (which I love) and there is no melodrama. It is as real as it could be. There is office romance. There is life going on as usual after the loss of a loved one. There is also the knowing that life may not be the same, but it will change for the better, if you want it to. The other guy – Markus is clumsy and doesn’t know how a woman like Natalie could love him. He may not be her knight in shining armour and yet Foenkinos writing makes him one.

The book speaks of social norms and breaks all of them in one single long sweep. I am not one for romantic books and yet Delicacy is romantic and not so, if you know what I mean. There is a lot of soul to the book. There were times I found myself weeping and with the next turn of the page, I was smiling.

“Delicacy” is maybe one of those rare books that truly come to you when you really want to read something like this. You cannot read it when you wish to. You perhaps have to wait it out, like I did. There will always be such books and the good part is that there will always be patient readers, waiting to be enthralled.

You can watch the trailer of the move here starring Audrey Tautou, one of my favourites. This should also lead you to read this wonderful book.

When an author has had a kind of life which no one can match up to, that is when books such as these are needed. I think to a very large extent, only a few authors can rise to this rank from the plentiful in the literary sea, existing as of now. I have always felt this rare closeness to Ismat Aapa and I do not know why. I think to a very large extent (and I am only guessing here) is the marginalized context – of both of us that I am able to relate to her, the way I do. The bold texture of her life, the choices made against the grain of the norm and more than anything else, to fight for the cause of her work, is something worth admiring, perhaps a hundred thousand times over. Where else can one see this passion today? I may be getting ahead of myself here, but that is only because I love her so.

“Ismat: Her Life, Her Times” is a wonderfully constructed book. There is a lot in this book and I can recommend it to any Chughtai lover. Both, Sukrita and Sadique have managed to almost write a canvas of her work and the woman that she was. She is one woman who had so much to say and she always said it with a bite, with humour and emphasizing on the fact of breaking all barriers and boundaries. This book encapsulates her life the way she lived it – from a writer to her advent in the Indian Film Industry to her lens and the way she viewed everything with it.

What is even more enchanting is the range of contributors – who have written about her and are collated in this book – from Faiz Ahmad Faiz to Manto to Krishan Chander and Qurratulain Hyder, commenting on Ismat – the person and the writer.

“Ismat: Her Life Her Times” is a dedication to a writer beyond words. It is her life, through pictures, through letters, through her work and the personality she was. The book could be seen as a starter, as a guide to all her works (her vast body of work that is), and to encourage readers to go and read more of her books, her stories and if possible watch the movies she wrote for and acted in.

To me this book embodies the woman beautifully. Of course not as beautifully as Kaghazeen Hain Pairan, but it does bring to fore mostly everything about her. A book not to be missed out on. A book which takes the writer beyond everything else and gives her the due and credit she has always deserved.

Here is a forty seven long interview of hers, if you are interested and by the way you should be:

Off-late I had stopped reading Young Adult novels or anything close to in that genre or even children’s books for that matter. I did not find anything new in them. They were either set in magical worlds or in this world with fantastical creatures. Till I ended up reading, “The One and Only Ivan” by Katherine Applegate.

The book is for young adult and is based on a true story of a gorilla named Ivan. For me, the book did a lot. Perhaps books that you need do come into your life only at that time. There is no other way to this so-called selection – when books find you and want to be read by you.

“The One and Only Ivan” is about Ivan – a gorilla who has lived in a cage for almost twenty seven years of his life. He has had Bob – a dog for company and Stella – an aging elephant. Ivan is a silverback gorilla – the kind who has to protect his tribe and family and here he is in a circus mall on the highway on Exit 8. He is a gorilla who paints – finger paints at that and those paintings sell. He watches television in his cage. There is nothing else to do anyway.

Ivan is close to George the cleaner and his daughter Julia. Mack is the owner of this theme based mall. He is the man in-charge. Life goes on as usual. Till one day, Ruby, a young elephant makes an entry. Circumstances lead to Ivan making a promise – that of saving Ruby’s life. Of setting her free, of not making her become another addition to the mall, which becomes the mission of his life. That is when the story takes off.

The reader learns about how Ivan came to be here and about his life. There is Ruby’s life thrown in and so is Stella’s. I liked the story because it rang true. It is based on a true story. There are characters which are thrown in for effect, but the story is that of Ivan’s. Towards the end, I felt that Applegate was rushing with the story; however, given the plot and the structure, I let that pass. To me, “The One and Only Ivan” was a book which is sweet, full of life, hope, a great and unique friendship and above all about freedom, which we sometimes take too much for granted and need to learn its value. A read for times when you have given up on all hope.

I had wanted to read, “The End of Your Life Book Club” the first time I read about it, which was in April 2012 or somewhere closer to that month. I love reading books about books and more so when a selection is made and discussed, just as the title suggests – a book club. For me, it was more than that. It was the story that made me want to grab this one and start and I did when I got the first chance. I have just finished reading this book and I am overwhelmed beyond words. So maybe this review will be a short one, just because I want whichever reader to pick up this book, to be able to enjoy it without any pre-conceived notion of anyone else’s opinion about it.

“The End of Your Life Book Club” is about a mother and a son (the author and his mother), whose love for books is never-ending. They discuss books and talk about books throughout the journey that the author describes brilliantly in this work. Will’s mom has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the journey of the book club starts at the doctor’s office and the waiting room as they wait for the chemo appointments and discuss books that they are reading at the same time. The book is a tribute to his mother and books and life and its magnanimity.

What struck me was the way this book is written. It is about Mary Ann Schwalbe and her family, with books playing a major role between her and her second born, Will Schwalbe. The book is simple and yet chronicles a family’s life, a mother’s love and more than that, the woman that she was – compassionate, generous, kind, loving and a reader. I had to pen down this review because I want more people to read this book – it is about books for sure and it is also about connections – about telling your loved ones that you love them and are proud of them, no matter what.

The writing is thread-bare and comes from the heart. It must have been very difficult for Mr. Schwalbe to pen this book, considering how personal it is, and yet at the same time, I am only too glad that he decided to write this book and share his mother’s life with readers around the world. Of how building a library in Kabul was the most important task for her (given her associations with non-profit organizations) to the daily planning of dinners and birthday parties. Mary Ann Schwalbe is a woman I think every reader would want to have known and this book is a perfect way of doing that. To know what she read and why and more so what sort of a woman she was – determined to help others and live her life to the fullest no matter what, not even deterring in the face of a disease.

“The End of Your Life Book Club” comes from an emotional place. There were times I choked and nearly cried and was so happy to have been reading this book. I know for a fact that I will reread this one and also read all the books that Will and Mary read throughout the course of the book. It is a book about reading and how it can save you at most times. It is about love and what family means to you. It is about life. I cannot recommend it enough.

When a writer writes a journal or something close to a memoir, it takes a lot from him or her. I am safely assuming that because anything which is personal, when put to paper, leads to memories surfacing and that must be at some level, difficult to deal with. Memoirs or something close to them isn’t easy to document. “Winter Journal” by Paul Auster is one such book and I will add to this and say that it is not your regular kind of biography or journal or a slice of the writer’s life so to say. It is indeed different.

“Winter Journal” to me was more of a life lived and more years to go in the author’s life that was written about in the most beautiful manner. The book is written in the second-person narrative and I loved the approach for two reasons. Firstly, it is personal and yet detached from the self. Secondly, the narrative was easy to get into. Not at any point, did I feel that the book was boring or mundane and that says a lot for a collection of memories.

The best part of this book is that everyone can relate to some part or the other. When Auster writes of his mother and how she died and how he felt, I could co-relate it to my father’s death. The emotions are universal and Auster does a wonderful job of getting them right. I did not mind the fact that the book isn’t a traditional memoir. I loved that it was not that. The writing wrung me inside out. The pages when Paul Auster speaks of the twenty one homes he has lived in right from his birth made me think of the homes I had lived in and what does one truly call home?

Relationships are most extensively spoken about in the book. The ones he shared with his father and mother to his sister, his ex-wife, the love for his second wife, friends and children. Each relationship is connected with memories, thoughts and emotions that were enough to overwhelm me at various points.

The book is more of an elegy of aging, memory, loss and the relationship of the body and the soul to say. Winter Journal is personal and maybe that is why readers can connect to it, as it is written that way, without the impersonal. Paul Auster’s musings of his life till his sixty-four years is happy, sad, bittersweet and human above everything else. I remember the first time I started reading Auster, when I picked up The New York Trilogy, and since then I have read everything that he has written.

Winter Journal brings to surface life as is. The daily living and the losses that come with age and assessed in the later years are written about beautifully in this book. You should read this book if you want to connect and know about a writer’s life – the intimate details of writing as well, of memories that abound and life only but to be lived.